Dr. Maria Millan

Stem Cell Agency Expands Industry Alliance Program to  Accelerate Therapies

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An ever-growing array of academic and industry resources are required to rapidly translate scientific discoveries and emerging technologies toward safe and effective regenerative medicine therapies for patients. To help, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is creating a network of Industry Resource Partners (IRP) that will make its unique resources available to help accelerate the progression of CIRM-funded Discovery, Translational and Clinical stage research projects toward transformative regenerative medicine therapies for rare and prevalent diseases.

The Industry Resource Partners will offer their services, technologies and expertise to CIRM-funded projects in a cost-effective, stage-appropriate and consistent manner.

For example, Novo Nordisk is making research-grade vials of its Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)-grade human embryonic stem cell line available for CIRM Discovery Quest stage research projects at no cost. Having access to clinically compatible pluripotent stem cell lines such as this one will help CIRM researchers accelerate the translation of their therapeutic discoveries toward clinical use. Researchers will also have future access to Novo Nordisk’s GMP seed stock as well as opportunities for partnering with Novo Nordisk.

“CIRM is a lender of first resort, supporting projects in the very early stages, long before they are able to attract outside investment,” says Shyam Patel, PhD, the Director of Business Development at CIRM. “With the launch of this program we hope to create a force-multiplier effect by bringing in industry partners who have the resources, experience and expertise to help further accelerate CIRM-funded regenerative medicine research projects.”

This new network builds on work CIRM started in 2018 with the Industry Alliance Program (IAP). The goal of the IAP was to partner researchers and industry to help accelerate the most promising stem cell, gene and regenerative medicine therapy programs to commercialization. Four of the members of the IAP are also founding members or the IRP.

In addition to Novo Nordisk, the IRP includes:

ElevateBio is providing access to high quality, well-characterized induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines to CIRM Discovery Quest stage research projects for product development in regenerative medicine. CIRM awardees will also have access to ElevateBio’s viral vector technologies, process development, analytical development, and GMP manufacturing services.

Bayer is offering to support the cell therapy process development and GMP manufacturing needs of CIRM Translational and Clinical awardees at its newly built Berkeley facilities. The partnered projects will have access to Bayer’s cell therapy manufacturing facilities, equipment, resources and expertise. Bayer is also open to partnering from fee-based-services to full business development and licensing opportunities. 

Resilience is providing access to its GMP manufacturing services for CIRM Translational and Clinical Stage projects. In addition to providing access to its cell therapy manufacturing services and partnering opportunities, Resilience will provide project consultation that could aid CIRM applicants in drafting manufacturing plans and budgets for CIRM applications.

“These partnerships are an important step forward in helping advance not only individual projects but also the field as a whole,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, President and CEO of CIRM. “One of the biggest challenges facing regenerative medicine right now involves manufacturing. Providing researchers with access to high quality starting materials and advanced manufacturing capabilities is going to be essential in helping these projects maintain high quality standards and comply with the regulatory frameworks needed to bring these therapies to patients.”

While the IRP Network will offer its services to CIRM grantees there is no obligation or requirement that any CIRM awardee take advantage of these services.

Stem Cell Agency funds clinical trial targeting scarred urethras

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A urethral stricture is scarring of the tube that carries urine out of the body. If left untreated it can be intensely painful and lead to kidney stones and infections. That’s why the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is investing more than $3.8 million in a Phase 1 clinical trial to create a stem cell-based therapy for the condition.

This is the 81st clinical trial that CIRM has funded.

When a scar, or stricture, forms along the urethra it impedes the flow of urine and causes other complications. James Yoo, M.D., Ph.D., and his team at Wake Forest University Health Sciences will use epithelial and smooth muscle cells, taken from the patient’s bladder, and layer them on to a synthetic tubular scaffold. The tube will then be surgically implanted inside the urethra.

The goal is for the progenitor cells to support self-renewal of the tissue and for the entire structure to become integrated into the surrounding tissue and become indistinguishable from it, restoring normal urinary function. Dr. Yoo and his team believe their approach has the potential to be effective for at least a decade.

“While not immediately life-threatening, urethral strictures lead to multiple health complications that impair quality of life and predispose to kidney dysfunction,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, President and CEO of CIRM. “Developing an effective and durable treatment would significantly impact lives and has the potential to decrease the cumulative healthcare costs of treating recurrent kidney stones, infections and downstream kidney complications, especially of long-segment urethral strictures.”

A big deal for type 1 diabetes

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It’s not often you get excited talking about company mergers, but a deal announced today is something worth getting excited about, particularly if you have type 1 diabetes (T1D).  

Today Vertex announced it was buying ViaCyte for $320 million in cash. Why is that important? Because both companies are working on developing stem cell therapies for people with type 1 diabetes, so combining the two may help speed up that work. 

Now, in the interests of full disclosure the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has been supporting ViaCyte’s work for some years now, investing in nine different research programs, including two clinical trials with the company.  

ViaCyte has been developing an implantable device which contains pancreatic endoderm cells that mature over a few months and turn into insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells, the kind destroyed by T1D.  

Vertex is taking a slightly different approach, manufacturing synthetic islet cells which are then injected into the patient.  

In a news release both companies said the deal – which is slated to be completed later this year – would help speed up that work.:  

“VX-880 has successfully demonstrated clinical proof of concept in T1D, and the acquisition of ViaCyte will accelerate our goal of transforming, if not curing T1D by expanding our capabilities and bringing additional tools, technologies and assets to our current stem cell-based programs,” said Reshma Kewalramani, M.D., Chief Executive Officer and President of Vertex.  

“ViaCyte’s commitment to finding a functional cure for T1D is shared by Vertex, and this acquisition will allow Vertex to deploy ViaCyte’s tools, technologies and assets toward the development of Vertex’s multiple cell replacement therapy approaches designed to reduce the burden of millions of people living with T1D worldwide,” said Michael Yang, President and Chief Executive Officer of ViaCyte.  

Dr. Maria Millan, CIRM’s President and CEO, says it’s always gratifying to see a project we have supported continue to progress.

“We are delighted at the news that Vertex and ViaCyte are combining their experience, expertise and resources in working to develop a stem cell therapy for type 1 diabetes. At CIRM we pride ourselves on helping de-risk projects, giving promising research the support it needs to attract outside investment. We have been big supporters of ViaCyte’s work over many years. That support has been vital in helping lead to this deal. We believe this is good news for both companies and hope it will ultimately be even better news for everyone with type 1 diabetes.”

Stem Cell Agency Board Invests in 19 Discovery Research Programs Targeting Cancers, Heart Disease and Other Disorders

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Dr. Judy Shizuru, Stanford University

While stem cell and gene therapy research has advanced dramatically in recent years, there are still many unknowns and many questions remaining about how best to use these approaches in developing therapies. That’s why the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) today approved investing almost $25 million in 19 projects in early stage or Discovery research.

The awards are from CIRM’s DISC2 Quest program, which supports  the discovery of promising new stem cell-based and gene therapy technologies that could be translated to enable broad use and ultimately, improve patient care.

“Every therapy that helps save lives or change lives begins with a researcher asking a simple question, “What if?”, says Dr. Maria T. Millan, the President and CEO of CIRM. “Our Quest awards reflect the need to keep supporting early stage research, to gain a deeper understanding of stem cells work and how we can best tap into that potential to advance the field.”

Dr. Judy Shizuru at Stanford University was awarded $1.34 million to develop a safer, less-toxic form of bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HCT). HCT is the only proven cure for many forms of blood disorders that affect people of all ages, sexes, and races worldwide. However, current methods involve the use of chemotherapy or radiation to destroy the patient’s own unhealthy blood stem cells and make room for the new, healthy ones. This approach is toxic and complex and can only be performed by specialized teams in major medical centers, making access particularly difficult for poor and underserved communities.

Dr. Shizuru proposes developing an antibody that can direct the patient’s own immune cells to kill diseased blood stem cells. This would make stem cell transplant safer and more effective for the treatment of many life-threatening blood disorders, and more accessible for people in rural or remote parts of the country.

Lili Yang UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center: Photo courtesy Reed Hutchinson PhotoGraphics

Dr. Lili Yang at UCLA was awarded $1.4 million to develop an off-the-shelf cell therapy for ovarian cancer, which causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system.

Dr. Yang is using immune system cells, called invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT) to attack cancer cells. However, these iNKT cells are only found in small numbers in the blood so current approaches involve taking those cells from the patient and, in the lab, modifying them to increase their numbers and strength before transplanting them back into the patient. This is both time consuming and expensive, and the patient’s own iNKT cells may have been damaged by the cancer, reducing the likelihood of success.

In this new study Dr. Yang will use healthy donor cord blood cells and, through genetic engineering, turn them into the specific form of iNKT cell therapy targeting ovarian cancer. This DISC2 award will support the development of these cells and do the necessary testing and studies to advance it to the translational stage.

Timothy Hoey and Tenaya Therapeutics Inc. have been awarded $1.2 million to test a gene therapy approach to replace heart cells damaged by a heart attack.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. with the highest incidence among African Americans. It’s caused by damage or death of functional heart muscle cells, usually due to heart attack. Because these heart muscle cells are unable to regenerate the damage is permanent. Dr. Hoey’s team is developing a gene therapy that can be injected into patients and turn their cardiac fibroblasts, cells that can contribute to scar tissue, into functioning heart muscle cells, replacing those damaged by the heart attack.

The full list of DISC2 Quest awards is:

APPLICATION NUMBERTITLE OF PROGRAMPRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORAMOUNT
  DISC2-13400  Targeted Immunotherapy-Based Blood Stem Cell Transplantation    Judy Shizuru, Stanford Universtiy  $1,341,910    
  DISC2-13505  Combating Ovarian Cancer Using Stem Cell-Engineered Off-The-Shelf CAR-iNKT Cells    Lili Yang, UCLA  $1,404,000
  DISC2-13515  A treatment for Rett syndrome using glial-restricted
neural progenitor cells  		  Alysson Muotri, UC San Diego  $1,402,240    
  DISC2-13454  Targeting pancreatic cancer stem cells with DDR1 antibodies.    Michael Karin, UC San Diego  $1,425,600  
  DISC2-13483  Enabling non-genetic activity-driven maturation of iPSC-derived neurons    Alex Savtchenko, Nanotools Bioscience  $675,000
  DISC2-13405  Hematopoietic Stem Cell Gene Therapy for Alpha
Thalassemia  		  Don Kohn, UCLA    $1,323,007  
    DISC2-13507  CAR T cells targeting abnormal N-glycans for the
treatment of refractory/metastatic solid cancers  		  Michael Demetriou, UC Irvine  $1,414,800  
  DISC2-13463  Drug Development of Inhibitors of Inflammation Using
Human iPSC-Derived Microglia (hiMG)  		  Stuart Lipton, Scripps Research Inst.  $1,658,123  
  DISC2-13390  Cardiac Reprogramming Gene Therapy for Post-Myocardial Infarction Heart Failure    Timothy Hoey, Tenaya Therapeutics  $1,215,000  
  DISC2-13417  AAV-dCas9 Epigenetic Editing for CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder    Kyle Fink, UC Davis  $1,429,378  
  DISC2-13415  Defining the Optimal Gene Therapy Approach of
Human Hematopoietic Stem Cells for the Treatment of
Dedicator of Cytokinesis 8 (DOCK8) Deficiency  		  Caroline Kuo, UCLA  $1,386,232  
  DISC2-13498  Bioengineering human stem cell-derived beta cell
organoids to monitor cell health in real time and improve therapeutic outcomes in patients  		  Katy Digovich, Minutia, Inc.  $1,198,550  
  DISC2-13469  Novel antisense therapy to treat genetic forms of
neurodevelopmental disease.  		  Joseph Gleeson, UC San Diego  $1,180,654  
  DISC2-13428  Therapeutics to overcome the differentiation roadblock in Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS)    Michael Bollong, Scripps Research Inst.  $1,244,160  
  DISC2-13456  Novel methods to eliminate cancer stem cells    Dinesh Rao, UCLA  $1,384,347  
  DISC2-13441  A new precision medicine based iPSC-derived model to study personalized intestinal fibrosis treatments in
pediatric patients with Crohn’s diseas  		  Robert Barrett Cedars-Sinai  $776,340
  DISC2-13512  Modified RNA-Based Gene Therapy for Cardiac
Regeneration Through Cardiomyocyte Proliferation		  Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes  $1,565,784
  DISC2-13510  An hematopoietic stem-cell-based approach to treat HIV employing CAR-T cells and anti-HIV broadly
neutralizing antibodies  		  Brian Lawson, The Scintillon Institute  $1,143,600  
  DISC2-13475  Developing gene therapy for dominant optic atrophy using human pluripotent stem cell-derived retinal organoid disease model    Xian-Jie Yang, UCLA  $1,345,691  

Stem cell agency invests in therapy using killer cells to target colorectal, breast and ovarian cancers

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While there have been some encouraging advances in treating cancer in recent decades, there are still many cancers that either resist treatment or recur after treatment. Today the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) approved investing in a therapy targeting some of these hard-to-treat tumors.

BioEclipse Therapeutics Inc. was awarded nearly $8M to test a therapy using immune cells loaded with a cancer-killing virus that targets cancer tissue but spares healthy tissue.

This is the 78th clinical trial funded directly by the Stem Cell Agency.

BioEclipse combines two approaches—an immune cell called a cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cell and a virus engineered to kill cancer cells called an oncolytic virus (OV)—to create what they call “a multi-mechanistic, targeted treatment.”

They will use the patient’s own immune cells and, in the lab, combine them with the OV. The cell/virus combination will then be administered back to the patient. The job of the CIK cells is to carry the virus to the tumors. The virus is designed to specifically attack and kill tumors and stimulate the patient’s immune system to attack the tumor cells. The goal is to eradicate the primary tumor and prevent relapse and recurrence.

“With the intent to develop this treatment for chemotherapy-resistant or refractory solid tumors—including colorectal cancer, triple negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, gastric cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, and osteosarcoma—it addresses a significant unmet medical need in fatal conditions for which there are limited treatment options,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, President and CEO of CIRM.  

The CIRM Board also approved more than $18 million in funding four projects under the Translation Projects program. The goal of this program is to support promising regenerative medicine (stem cell-based or gene therapy) projects that accelerate completion of translational stage activities necessary for advancement to clinical study or broad end use.

The awards went to:

ApplicationTitleInstitutionAward Amount
TRAN1-133442Optogenetic therapy for treating retinitis pigmentosa and
other inherited retinal diseases  		  Paul Bresge Ray Therapeutics Inc.  $3,999,553  
TRAN3-13332Living Synthetic Vascular Grafts with Renewable Endothelium    Aijun Wang UC Davis  $3,112,567    
TRAN1-13370Next generation affinity-tuned CAR for prostate cancer    Preet Chaudhary University of Southern California  $5,805,144  
TRAN1-3345Autologous MPO Knock-Out Hematopoietic Stem and
Progenitor Cells for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension  		  Don Kohn UC Los Angeles  $5,207,434  

Stem Cell Agency Board Approves Funding for Rare Immune Disorder

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Taylor Lookofsky (center), a person with IPEX syndrome, with his father Brian and Dr. Rosa Bacchetta

IPEX syndrome is a rare condition where the body can’t control or restrain an immune response, so the person’s immune cells attack their own healthy tissue. The syndrome mostly affects boys, is diagnosed in the first year of life and is often fatal. Today the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) invested almost $12 million in a therapy being tested in a clinical trial to help these patients.

Children born with IPEX syndrome have abnormalities in the FOXP3 gene. This gene controls the production of a type of immune cell called a T Regulatory or Treg cell. Without a normal FOXP3 +Treg cells other immune cells attack the body leading to the development of IPEX syndrome, Type 1 diabetes, severe eczema, damage to the small intestines and kidneys and failure to thrive.

Current treatments involve the use of steroids to suppress the immune system – which helps ease symptoms but doesn’t slow down the progression of the disease – or a bone marrow stem cell transplant.  However, a transplant requires a healthy, closely matched donor to reduce the risk of a potentially fatal transplant complication called graft vs host disease, in which the donated immune cells attack the recipient’s tissues.

Dr. Rosa Bacchetta and her team at Stanford University have developed a therapy using the patient’s own natural CD4 T cells that, in the lab, have been genetically modified to express the FoxP3 gene and converted into Treg cells. Those cells are then re-infused into the patient with a goal of determining if this approach is both safe and beneficial. Because the cells come from the patients there will be fewer concerns about the need for immunosuppressive treatment to stop the body rejecting the cells. It will also help avoid the problems of finding a healthy donor and graft vs host disease.

Dr. Bacchetta has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test this approach in a Phase 1 clinical trial for patients suffering with IPEX syndrome.

“Children with IPEX syndrome clearly represent a group of patients with an unmet medical need, and this therapy could make a huge difference in their lives,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, the President and CEO of CIRM. “Success of this treatment in this rare disease presents far-reaching potential to develop treatments for a larger number of patients with a broad array of immune disorders resulting from dysfunctional regulatory T cells.”

In addition to a strong scientific recommendation to fund the project the review team also praised it for the applicants’ commitment to the principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in their proposal. The project proposes a wide catchment area, with a strong focus on enrolling people who are low-income, uninsured or members of traditionally overlooked racial and ethnic minority communities.

Lack of diversity leaves cloud hanging over asthma drug study

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Asthma spacer, photo courtesy Wiki Media Creative Commons

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If you want to know if a new drug or therapy is going to work in the people it affects the most you need to test the drug or therapy in the people most affected by the disease. That would seem blindingly obvious, wouldn’t it? Apparently not.

Case in point. A new asthma medication, one that seemingly shows real promise in reducing attacks in children, was tested on an almost entirely white patient population, even though Black and Puerto Rican children are far more likely to suffer from asthma.

The study enrolled more than 400 children, between the ages of 6 and 11, with moderate to serious uncontrolled asthma and treated them with a medication called Dupixent. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were impressive. Children given Dupixent had an average drop in severe asthma attacks of 65 percent compared to children given a placebo.

The only problem is 90 percent of the children in the study were white. Why is that a problem? Because, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, only 9.5 percent of white children have asthma, compared to 24 percent of Puerto Rican children and 18 percent of Black children. So, the groups most likely to suffer from the disease were disproportionately excluded from a study about a treatment for the disease.

Some people might think, “So what! If the medication works for one kid it will work for another, what does race have to do with it?” Quite a lot actually.

A study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology concluded that: “Race/ethnicity modified the association between total IgE (an antibody in the blood that is a marker for asthma) and asthma exacerbations. Elevated IgE level was associated with worse asthma outcomes in Puerto Ricans… Our findings suggest that eligibility for asthma biologic therapies differs across pediatric racial/ethnic populations.”

The article concluded by calling for “more studies in diverse populations for equitable treatment of minority patients with asthma.” Something that clearly didn’t happen in the Dupixent study.

While that’s more than disappointing, it’s not surprising. A recent study of vaccine clinical trials in JAMA Network Open found that:

  • Overall, white individuals made up almost 80 percent of people enrolled.
  • Black individuals were represented only 10.6 percent of the time.
  • Latino participants were represented just 11.6 percent of the time. 

Additionally, in pediatric trials, Black participants were represented just over 10 percent of the time and Latino participants were represented 22.5 percent of the time. The study concluded by saying that “diversity enrollment targets are needed for vaccine trials in the US.”

I would expand on that, saying they are needed for all clinical trials. That’s one of the many reasons why we at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) are making Diversity, Equity and Inclusion an important part of everything we do, such as requiring all applicants to have a written DEI plan if they want funding from us. Dr. Maria Millan, our President and CEO, recently co-authored an article in Nature Cell Biology, driving home the need for greater diversity in basic science and research in general.

DEI has become an important part of the conversation this past year. But the Dupixent trial shows that if we are truly serious about making it part of what we do, we have to stop talking and start acting.

Some good news for people with dodgy knees

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Graphic contrasting a healthy knee with one that has osteoarthritis

About 10% of Americans suffer from knee osteoarthritis, a painful condition that can really impair mobility and quality of life. It’s often caused by an injury to cartilage, say when you were playing sports in high school or college, and over time it continues to degenerate and ultimately results in the  loss of both cartilage and bone in the joint.

Current treatments involve either medication to control the pain or surgery. Medication works up to a point, but as the condition worsens it loses effectiveness.  Knee replacement surgery can be effective, but is a serious, complicated procedure with a long recovery time.  That’s why the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) voted to invest almost $6 million in an innovative stem cell therapy approach to helping restore articular cartilage in the knee.

Dr. Frank Petrigliano, Chief of the Epstein Family Center for Sports Medicine at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), is using pluripotent stem cells to create chondrocytes (the cells responsible for cartilage formation) and then seeding those onto a scaffold. The scaffold is then surgically implanted at the site of damage in the knee. Based on scientific data, the seeded scaffold has the potential to regenerate the damaged cartilage, thus decreasing the likelihood of progression to knee osteoarthritis.  In contrast to current methods, this new treatment could be an off-the-shelf approach that would be less costly, easier to administer, and might also reduce the likelihood of progression to osteoarthritis.

This is a late-stage pre-clinical program. The goals are to manufacture clinical grade product, carry out extensive studies to demonstrate safety of the approach, and then file an IND application with the FDA, requesting permission to test the product in a clinical trial in people.

“Damage to the cartilage in our knees can have a big impact on quality of life,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, MD, President and CEO of CIRM. “It doesn’t just cause pain, it also creates problems carrying out simple, everyday activities such as walking, climbing stairs, bending, squatting and kneeling. Developing a way to repair or replace the damaged cartilage to prevent progression to knee osteoarthritis could make a major difference in the lives of millions of Americans. This program is a continuation of earlier stage work funded by CIRM at the Basic Biology and Translational stages, illustrating how CIRM supports scientific programs from early stages toward the clinic.”

CIRM funds clinical trials targeting heart disease, stroke and childhood brain tumors

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Gary Steinberg (Jonathan Sprague)

Heart disease and stroke are two of the leading causes of death and disability and for people who have experienced either their treatment options are very limited. Current therapies focus on dealing with the immediate impact of the attack, but there is nothing to deal with the longer-term impact. The CIRM Board hopes to change that by funding promising work for both conditions.

Dr. Gary Steinberg and his team at Stanford were awarded almost $12 million to conduct a clinical trial to test a therapy for motor disabilities caused by chronic ischemic stroke.  While “clot busting” therapies can treat strokes in their acute phase, immediately after they occur, these treatments can only be given within a few hours of the initial injury.  There are no approved therapies to treat chronic stroke, the disabilities that remain in the months and years after the initial brain attack.

Dr. Steinberg will use embryonic stem cells that have been turned into neural stem cells (NSCs), a kind of stem cell that can form different cell types found in the brain.  In a surgical procedure, the team will inject the NSCs directly into the brains of chronic stroke patients.  While the ultimate goal of the therapy is to restore loss of movement in patients, this is just the first step in clinical trials for the therapy.  This first-in-human trial will evaluate the therapy for safety and feasibility and look for signs that it is helping patients.

Another Stanford researcher, Dr. Crystal Mackall, was also awarded almost $12 million to conduct a clinical trial to test a treatment for children and young adults with glioma, a devastating, aggressive brain tumor that occurs primarily in children and young adults and originates in the brain.  Such tumors are uniformly fatal and are the leading cause of childhood brain tumor-related death. Radiation therapy is a current treatment option, but it only extends survival by a few months.

Dr. Crystal Mackall and her team will modify a patient’s own T cells, an immune system cell that can destroy foreign or abnormal cells.  The T cells will be modified with a protein called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR), which will give the newly created CAR-T cells the ability to identify and destroy the brain tumor cells.  The CAR-T cells will be re-introduced back into patients and the therapy will be evaluated for safety and efficacy.

Joseph Wu Stanford

Stanford made it three in a row with the award of almost $7 million to Dr. Joe Wu to test a therapy for left-sided heart failure resulting from a heart attack.  The major issue with this disease is that after a large number of heart muscle cells are killed or damaged by a heart attack, the adult heart has little ability to repair or replace these cells.  Thus, rather than being able to replenish its supply of muscle cells, the heart forms a scar that can ultimately cause it to fail.  

Dr. Wu will use human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to generate cardiomyocytes (CM), a type of cell that makes up the heart muscle.  The newly created hESC-CMs will then be administered to patients at the site of the heart muscle damage in a first-in-human trial.  This initial trial will evaluate the safety and feasibility of the therapy, and the effect upon heart function will also be examined.  The ultimate aim of this approach is to improve heart function for patients suffering from heart failure.

“We are pleased to add these clinical trials to CIRM’s portfolio,” says Maria T. Millan, M.D., President and CEO of CIRM.  “Because of the reauthorization of CIRM under Proposition 14, we have now directly funded 75 clinical trials.  The three grants approved bring forward regenerative medicine clinical trials for brain tumors, stroke, and heart failure, debilitating and fatal conditions where there are currently no definitive therapies or cures.”

Medeor Therapeutics Completes Enrollment in CIRM-Funded Clinical Trial for Kidney Transplant Patients

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A CIRM-funded clinical trial to help kidney transplant patients avoid the need for anti-rejection or immunosuppressive medications has completed enrollment and transplantation of all patients.

Medeor Therapeutics’ MDR-101 Phase 3 multi-center clinical trial involved 30 patients; 20 of them were treated with MDR-101, and 10 control subjects were given standard care. CIRM awarded Medeor, based in South San Francisco, $18.8 million for this research in January 2018.

More than 650,000 Americans suffer from end-stage kidney disease – a life-threatening condition caused by the loss of kidney function. For these people the best treatment option is a kidney transplant from a genetically matched, living donor. Even matched patients, however, face a lifetime on immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their immune system from rejecting the transplanted organ. These drugs can be effective at preventing rejection, but they come at a cost. Because they are toxic these medications increase a transplant patient’s life-time risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and infections.

Medeor Therapeutics developed its MDR-101 therapy to reprogram the patient’s immune system to accept a transplanted kidney without the need for long term use of immunosuppression drugs.

The company takes peripheral blood stem cells from the organ donor and infuses them into the patient receiving the donor’s kidney. This creates a condition called “mixed chimerism” where immune cells from the donor help the patient’s immune system adapt to and tolerate the donor’s kidney. 

After a standard kidney transplant, the patient is given a combination of three anti-rejection medications which they typically have to remain on for the rest of their lives. However, the Medeor patients, by day 40 post-transplant, are only taking one medication and the hope is that immunosuppression is discontinued at the end of one year.

“Chronic kidney disease and kidney failure are a growing problem in the US, that’s why it’s so important that we find new ways to reduce the burden on patients and increase the odds of a successful transplant with long term benefit,” says Maria T. Millan, M.D., President and CEO of CIRM. “Medeor’s approach may not only reduce the likelihood of a patient’s body rejecting the transplanted organ, but it can also improve the quality of life for these people and reduce overall health care costs by eliminating the need to stay on these immunosuppressive medications for life.”

In an earlier Phase 2 trial, a majority of patients achieved mixed chimerism. Approximately 74 percent of those patients have been off all immunosuppressive drugs for more than two years, including some who continue to be off immunosuppressive medications 15 years after their surgery.

“Today’s news is a tremendous milestone not only for Medeor but for the entire transplant community. This is the first randomized, multi-center pivotal study designed specifically to stop the use of all immunosuppressive anti-rejection drugs post-transplant. This therapy can be a true game changer in our efforts to transform transplant outcomes and help patients live healthier lives,” said Dan Brennan, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Medeor Therapeutics.

If the results from this pivotal clinical trial show that MDR-101 is both safe and effective, Medeor may apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval to market their approach to other patients in the U.S.